Updates - Infinity & Hordes

Couple updates tonight... As some of you may know, i bought a couple starter boxes for Infinity by Corvus Bell.  Its a cyberpunk scifi skirmish game with really neat rules that makes for incredibly dynamic and interesting play.  All thanks to beastsofwar.com featuring Infinity with their "Infinity Week".  Anyway... I bought the Yu-Jing and PanOceania starter boxes and downloaded all the rules (which are free to download!).  I had a helluva time deciding even on 2 armies as every faction has badass models that i wanted.. but alas, i had to settle on 2.

I finished cleaning and assembling the Yu-Jing set tonight:

I hope to add to this soon with Ninja's, shinobi, more ninja's with sniper rifles, and rebels on crotch rockets lol.

My PanO is still in the box (other than the quickstart demo game i did with @nemesiscafe).

Now for my Hordes/Circle Orboros updates..   I actually got a bit done today, at least everything i had set for a daily goal.   That is, cleaning up all the flashing/mould lines and washing the following:  Megalith, WW Stalker, Nuala the Huntress, and the Stone Keeper.  Tomorrow they will be ready to assemble and convert.

Megalith is getting some pretty hefty converting.  Most of his joints are getting cut and reassembled/puttied to give him a more imposing presence... instead of the <insert funny megalith pic here>.

Stalker i haven't quite decided, but i think for him i'm going to angle his sword a bit more horizontally and add a decapitated body in his open hand, the severed head on the base, and use a epoxy/paint trick to get a messy gore look.

Stone Keeper... i love this model and it has so much potential to be even more awesome.  Gonna make up a base for him to look like he's kinda like an earth bender, with his outstretched hand erecting stone from the earth around him.

Nuala isn't getting any special treatment... just no inspiration with her model.  Its ok, but nothing to get excited and write home about.

Gnarlhorn Satyr (Part 5)

Been awhile since i put an update up... haven't made a whole ton of progress on my army.  I have all but finished the gnarlhorn though.  All that's left is to seal/varnish him and finish the base with some flock/grass/lichen.   Here's the finished paint job.  Unfortunately my phone camera washed out a lot of the contrast and you can't see the dark shadows and bright highlights, but you get the general idea.

Gnarlhorn Satyr (Part 4) and Kromac Update

Ok.. tonight i spent most of my time working on my foam trays.. but i did get a little painting done.  I started laying down some of the metallics on my gnarlhorn's armor, and i started practicing the layering technique on the blues on both gnarly and Kromac.   The blends are smoother on the gnarlhorn, but the highlights are kindy funky (random light sources? lol).  Gonna hafta fix those...

As you can see i haven't finished painting all the metallics.. half of him still needs done.  What you see here is VGC gunmetal with black ink.  I'll highlight up with plain gunmetal and some chainmail into silver/glazemedium.  His textured hair regions are still a big sore spot with me.  Haven't quite got the color i want yet, still experimenting.. i finally found an image on google that perfectly depicts the color i want.. orangutan.jpg (the goatee).  Some of the kind folks @ ppforums gave me some tips on getting that color so i'll try that tomorrow perhaps.

KROMAC!!!

Kromacs blends aren't quite as smooth, but they look much more natural.   The only parts of him i've painted is the blue parts.  The rest was painted by someone else, but i plan on painting over most of it.  Or at least touching it up.. was too lazy to strip the whole model, and besides.. it was actually a pretty good paint job.. i'll just enhance it up a little :D

Wet Palettes.. freakin awesome!

So i saw this tip linked in a few places (brushthralls was the first place), and people seemed to be praising wet palettes and they seemed really easy to make.. so what the hell.  I gave it a shot.

Just take a privateer press blister package, cut the foam to fit into the bottom of the "bowl", then fill about 3/4 way full with water (just below the top of the foam).  Cut out a piece of parchment paper to the same size as the foam, get it wet, lay it flat on the foam and that's it... you have a wet palette.  The best part is, the blister is already made to snap shut, so you can seal it up and use it later.  I've had paint on mine for 2 days now, and its still wet and very much usable!

This saves a TON of paint!!  And, it keeps your paints nice and wet so you don't have to worry about rethinning, adding retarder, more water, getting clumps, etc.  You will occasionally have to add more water to keep the parchment sticking to it and damp.  You'll know when you need to add more water cause it will dry up and start curling up on you.  You'll know its too much water if your paint just bleeds everywhere and is unusable.  The picture above was taken after its been sitting for a day.  You can see the corners curling up, but the middle is still damp and the paint is still wet :)

Gnarlhorn Satyr (Part 3)

Didn't get much done on him.. just a couple coats of the blue armor inlay to finish that basecoat.  The raised parts of the armor I plan on doing with Chainmail VGC and highlighting up... unless i magically get good at NMM before i get to that part lol.

This blue was a mix of  VGC stormy blue and VGC imperial blue.  Matches pretty good to P3's dark blue.

Still trying to decide what color i'm going to do his fur/hair in.. I'd really like to blend it into a brown-orange-black scheme you see on some goats, with black horns, but not sure that color will go with my flesh color.  Black would look best, but i'm so set on black horns, not sure if i'd have enough contrast doing both in black.

Undecided on the loincloth as well... black and blue is my army's theme.. i'm either going to do black with a blue gem, or blue with an orange gem.  Orange looks awesome with blue and black and i think i'm gonna tie in oranges to my models for more contrast and pop.  Only on very subtle things tho.. like that tiny belt gem.. parts of weapons..

Anyway.. here's the pics:

Small Update: Practicing layers on highlights (pKrueger)

Just a small update before bed.  I got a chance to practice my layering technique on krueg's blue parts tonight.  It was fun, and offers a lot more control and realism over drybrushing.  Pics below.. Not bad, but i think I need a bit more color depth to the layers.  All my highlights look almost the same color, even tho i progressed up adding more white to the mixture with each layer, and applied in smaller spots to the brightest point.  Or at least that's what i tried to do lol.  One nice thing about posting these pictures, is the super zoomed view lets me see a close up view of where i should be putting highlights, and where i shouldn't.  I need to get one of those super magifiers for when i'm painting....  I always notice the wrong placement of highlights on these pics, but not while i'm painting!! details are too small! lol

Gnarlhorn Satyr (Part 2)

Ok, got the gnarlhorn's flesh basecoat and shading done.  I'll do the highlights after i get everything else basecoated.  Don't wanna have to redo the whole process if i mess up on the armor/surrounding pieces.  The more i work on this guy, the more he's becoming my favorite Circle model.  He's so badass looking, and i love the pose i have him in.

Here's my progress

As always, now that i see the super close up pictures, i see some areas i need to fix.  Probably hit those up tomorrow.  Few areas that need a couple more layers of shading applied